Tuesday, 31 May 2016

It's been ages since the last time I tried to write a novel. With everything going on in my life - first a baby, now another one on the way - I usually just stick to short stories because I can finish them in a timely manner before something breaks the thread of my concentration.I'm going to try though, mainly because writing short stories feels like playing in the fun pool to me: satisfying, but all the important stuff is happening in the big pool.The last time I tried writing something it was for National Novel Writing Month a few years back: a novel called "Nine Apple Pips".

Ungerminated seeds, unfinished novel

It was kind of climate dystopia/detective story that I'd been kicking around for a few years. It was a bad time to try: I'd just been promoted and we were waiting on baby number one. I was also a lot, lot less experienced that I am now and I didn't appreciate two important things:1) Writing to the clock like NaNoWriMo asks you to do isn't me. It probably works really well for some people, but I find that stories sit in the back of my head as I slowly write them and make much more interesting connections as I go. Racing forward eliminates that and encourages some of my most annoying faults like overusing semicolons. If I'm not concentrating, then my dialogue suffers and, it being against the clock, there's no time to fix it before going on to the next bit. I went through the old files - about 20k worth before I gave up - and spent a good solid hour editing the first page.

Not conducive to grammar; not fun either

2) Proper preparation before starting is everything. The novel was way too dark and bleak (tells you how easy the promotion was going!) and without forward planning and a little tonal balancing, it was turning into an interesting but not fun read. Again, grimdark novels have their place and their audience, but it doesn't really work for me.

Just an occasional ray of sunshine...

Anyway, I've just realised that, in writing this blog post, that I'm procrastinating again. The planning's done: the stage is set and the actors, while not knowing every line, are ready. Time to get started I think.

One last procrastination: Thanks for all the kind feedback about "The Biking Man" story. For some reason, posting it lead to a doubling of page views for the day, so clearly there was something about it that people really liked. Bikes, perhaps? Perhaps "Nine Apple Pips" would've been better with bikes. Perhaps the current effort would be!

A few years ago, I wrote a story called "The Biking Man" for a popular podcast. Every month, in between the interviews and other segments, they'd have a short story, performed by a voice actor. Unfortunately, the parent company cut the funding before it got to my piece so it never got performed. I'm not really sure where that leaves the publishing rights - whether it could ever be submitted to anyone else again - but I can definitely put it up here for people to read. Happy Bank Holiday!

The
Biking Man

Once
upon a time, there was a man with a bike. This was no ordinary bike.
This bike had no corporate logos, carbon-fibre suspension or tungsten
brake blocks. It was simple, plain and utilitarian - uncomfortable
undoubtedly, but superbly designed for the function of eventually
transporting a man from point A to point B.

I
first became aware of the Biking Man in January at around the same
time as the global media did: when he began crossing the Sahara
desert. At first, the news cameras boggled at the sight. The heavy
frame of the bike had sunk into the loose sand, leaving the bottom
curve of each wheel entirely concealed. Each turn of the pedals must
have been a tremendous effort in such cloying terrain, although this
never showed on the face of the cyclist. Each turn of the pedals
slithered the bike a little further forwards into countless sand
dunes and produced a distressing grinding noise as silicon crystals
ground to dust in the primitive gears.

The
man wouldn't talk to the cameras. When any questions were shouted
at him, he would smile a little and continue exactly as before, grind
after agonisingly slow grind. This vexed the reporters no end.

They
showed his picture on the front of most of the world’s newspapers,
especially after he continued cycling through the shifting sands for
an entire week without stopping for sleep or rest. He was troublingly
difficult to describe. He was dark-skinned, that was obvious, but
everything else was less easy to define. He was oldishly young and
beautifully ugly. His face bore both the simplicity of the idiot and
the serene majesty of genius. His clothes, a t-shirt and shorts, were
both slobbishly simple and the height of elegant simplicity. Cycling
through the sand clearly required substantial effort, but little of
that showed on his face. He was kind and stern and everything to all
men.

No-one
knew who he was.

This
annoyed the media outlets intensely.

Enquiry
having proved a dead end, they now switched to ridicule. Look at this
man, they would say, what a pointless waste of time and effort
cycling through the sand. What a fool this man must be. Let us all
laugh at the foolish man.

Under
the withering blaze of media attention, he was eventually recognised.
A postman in Athens had ridden beside him some weeks before. She’d
tried to engage this mysterious man in conversation, but he had
remained politely taciturn. Eventually, they’d parted ways and he’d
headed towards the port, obviously with the intention of securing a
berth on a ship across the Mediterranean Sea.

The
bombshell dropped when someone came forwards who recognised him from
a cycling lane in Berlin. The media became frenzied. This man had
cycled from Berlin to the Sahara desert. Why? He wasn't a
celebrity, so it wasn't an effort to rekindle a dying career. No
charity laid claim to his considerable efforts. Why else would
someone attempt such a feat? Life changing rewards were available for
anyone who provided information about his identity or his intentions.

The
real
global hysteria started when a rather hesitant report came from the
Polar One research base at the North Pole. One of the researchers
there had seen a man dressed in a t-shirt and shorts cycling past the
base early one morning, but had never reported it for fear of
ridicule by his colleagues. Appearing from the northern wastes in the
middle of a snowstorm, the Biking Man had patiently cycled his bike,
one pedal turn at a time, through deep drifts of snow without pause
until he vanished into the white blankness to the south.

I
think that might’ve been the month that someone started the Church
of the Biking Man. His tireless exertions and his tolerance of
suffering began to convince some that this was the second coming of
Christ. When he serenely cycled out of a lethal sandstorm and into
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Church of the Biking Man
got another hundred thousand converts and became a loud voice in the
international press.

One
day, one of the hundreds strong band of reporters snapped and tried
to confront him when he approached the suburbs of Cape Town in South
Africa. The world held its breath as it watched on the television. To
my shame, I thought that the Man would cycle straight through the
reporter, turning him to dust.

Who
are you? What are you doing? the reporter had screamed at him, inches
from his face.

For
the first time ever, the Biking Man stopped. He laid a weather-beaten
hand on the reporter’s shoulder, smiled gently and looked into his
eyes. The reporter’s shoulders slowly sank and he stepped to one
side, gaze lowered. According to rumour, the reporter immediately
quit his job and quickly returned home to tell his wife that he loved
her and to spent time with his son, sailing toy boats on the local
duck pond. The media suppressed that story as heavily as they could,
but no-one ever stood in the Man’s way again.

I
watched every television program about him, even the interview with
the Church of the Biking Man's “Grand Axle” which revealed him as
a total nutcase. The “Grand Axle” had tried to use the
opportunity to attract more donations to his Church to “support his
Holy Progress,” but a few eviscerating questions revealed the man
as a total charlatan. Despite the deafening roar that his actions
were producing around the world, the Man continued on regardless.

After
Cape Town, some bright spark with a computer worked out that the
Biking Man was heading, almost directly, for the South Pole. The
world went completely crazy at that point. The internet, the radio,
the newspapers and the television channels were totally consumed with
speculation about the Man, the purpose for his journey and what would
happen when he reached there. There was an unequal split of opinion:
two-thirds of the Earth believed that his arrival at the South Pole
would be the beginning of a time of enlightenment, a time where the
greedy and evil would repent and all would join together in the
Brotherhood of Man. The remaining third were convinced that the
Biking Man was the embodiment of evil and that his arrival at his
Polar destination would herald the End of All Time, but it is worth
noting that no-one actually tried to stop him.

No-one
saw him vanish from South Africa. A suspicious series of coincidences
and mishaps happened to every news team tracking him. This team took
the night off and that team decided to recharge all of their camera
batteries at the same time. No-one was fooled by the unlikely
coincidences, but no-one could convincingly explain why they’d
followed the courses of action that they did.

Eventually,
NATO retasked one of its surveillance satellites under considerable
media criticism, spotted him in Antarctica, pedalling slowly across
the ice and through the snow. Round and round the pedals squeaked.
His progress was inexorable, like the slowly ticking heart of the
universe. I knew people who left the live feed active overnight to
comfort them as they slept. I knew others, who would watch the live
feed of the Biking Man serenely cycling through Antarctica blizzards
and confess their sins, asking for forgiveness and advice on how to
be a better person.

As
he neared his destination, the millennial mood at the Scott-Amundsen
base became overwhelming. At unbelievable cost, hundreds of observers
had been flown in to watch the Biking Man reach the exact South Pole.
Some believed that his arrival there would signal the ultimate
redemption of Man; some believed that the very Earth would split
underfoot and hordes of demonic beasts would surge force and scourge
the planet of unbelievers. One December morning, hundreds of
observers sat in hastily constructed shelters waiting for his
arrival. They were not disappointed. The simple bike and the simply
dressed man squeaked into view across the ice, inching nearer and
nearer to the Pole.

The
tension as he approached was absolutely unbearable. Every television
station in the world was showing a live feed of the hazy silhouette
pedalling nearer and nearer.

In
the strange distortion of time that happens when any event is keenly
anticipated, he reached the Pole sooner than anyone expected and
stopped suddenly on the exact spot. The world held its collective
breath.

The
Biking Man alighted from his simple bike and stepped onto the snow,
controlling its slow descent on to the ice with a confident, strong
arm. He took a little time stretching his arms. He took a little time
stretching his legs. He smiled benevolently at the assembled hundreds
and the viewing billions.

With
a thoughtful look on his face, the Man turned to the assembled horde
of cameras and raised his right arm to the heavens. With a warm grin,
the Biking Man gave the viewing Earth a sincere thumbs-up.

The
Biking Man picked up his bike, turned it around to aim it into the
thin snowy valley he had carved on his journey to the Pole and rode
off into the distance once more.

Sunday, 29 May 2016

LeeStock festival 2016 Part Two: So after Celeste's mammoth sleep, we managed to rush back for a last little bit of festival. Celly insisted that we bring along her 'instunents' - her word - so that she could play along with the people on stage. She tried singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" along with the musicians too, but it turned out that none of them were doing a nursery rhymes set. Celeste and Lyn shared their first ever waffle on a stick, which Celly gobbled most of before escaping under the table. I just carried on my one man mission to empty the beer tent of all cider and cider-like products.

(Lyn and I worked out that she's been to more 'Eels' gigs than I've been to gigs total. I'm such a dweeb!)

So far this morning, we've been at LeeStock 2106 (Celeste's asleep right now so part two will be later). It's been marvellous so far - the music's very good and the cider's coma strength - and as soon as Celly wakes up, we're going right back. It's her very first festival, which gives her an average of one festival every two years - not bad. I, on the other hand, have gone to 3 festivals in 33 years, which averages 1 festival per 11 years. Conclusion: Celeste is cooler than me. Further conclusion: Maths is not my friend.

Lyn has been to dozens more than me, so I know that she's cooler than me and, thinking about it, even the baby on the way has averaged 1 festival in -3 months. I am actually the least cool of my family :'(

Thursday, 26 May 2016

So this week, Celeste's grandparents have been away on holiday. Usually she's with them a few days a week while her Mum and I are both at work, so she's missing them terribly. The biggest confusion for her is why they've gone on holiday. Explaining this to a little person to whom going to a new shop is a holiday was tricky.In the end, I decided to explain that her Nanny and Grandad wanted to explore somewhere new. This seemed to work for a while, because there was a long pause."Looking for dinosaurs, maybe?" came the answer

Majorca, today

Further questioning of my little person revealed a concern that her beloved Nanny and Grandad might be eaten by dinosaurs on their holiday. To allay those fears, I showed her a picture of the lovely villa they're staying at.

Infested with dinosaurs

"Black dinosaurs in the trees!" she said, pointing at nothing in particular. Nothing I said would convince her otherwise.

Note to myself:Hi Mike - how are you? I'm hoping by the time you read this again, you've actually bothered editing all the long stuff you've written and sent it to someone, rather than endlessly writing new short stories. Yes, I know you get bored editing, but it's really important so just shut up and do it.Anyway, now that the pleasantries are over, the advice: don't let Celeste (or the new one on the way) wander around without a nappy after consuming a heroic volume of fruit juice. If there is an accident, don't assume that it can't immediately happen again. And again. And again. And again. Don't let your wife know that you're slower at learning negative consequences than a lab rat.If you do ignore this advice (as I think you might), make sure that you're better stocked with kitchen towel and disinfectant spray next time.

Monday, 9 May 2016

Done. 650 words cut out so that the story now just limbos under the 1700 word limit
for the competition. Now to worry about if the story’s actually any good!

Extraneous words removed, but does it still work?

When I first started writing, I didn't really believe in editing.
I corrected spellings and grammar – that kind of thing – but I naively assumed that
every word I wrote was vital to the plot or the atmosphere of the piece somehow.
Experience has taught me differently: that words can sometimes get in the way
of a story, rather than build it. The fact that I could safely remove a quarter
of the words from this short story and it still works is just the most recent
proof.

Now though, it goes through the most fearsome part of the
process. Not submitting it to an editor, but letting my wife – a woman who
studied English at St Andrews University and has more letters after her name
than I have letters in my entire name – read it. She is the most sweet-natured
person I know, but she can smell flabby prose from a mile away.

Where grammar assassins are trained

If I get it past her without it drowning in red ink, then I’ll
have done well.

Saturday, 7 May 2016

A few years ago, I won a Waterstones Crime Writing Competition with a story called "Tomb Town": a published author had picked it out as the best of the bunch. Unfortunately, the magazine it was scheduled to be published in (Suffolk and Norfolk Life) felt that it was too dark and asked me to write something new. In 48 hours.Two very busy days later, I submitted "Shell Game" and it got published in the September of that year. I've included it below and I'll stick "Tomb Town" up later. It's still my favourite of the two, dark or not.

Shell
Game

“I
don’t understand,” said Kelvin, staring up at the sculpture.
“There’re no shells here, but there’re huge metal scallop
shells sitting on the beach.”

We
all have our crosses to bear: mine is my new superior officer, DCI
Kelvin – crass, balding and fat.

I
looked at him incredulously. London had sent him here a month ago,
but he still knew nothing about the area.

“The
town has a long history…” I started but Kelvin walked away
mid-sentence, crunching unsteadily across the loose shingle.

“DC
Guyton…are you coming?” he called back irritably. I smothered my
sharp reply and followed, picking my way carefully around the clumps
of leafy plants erupting through the stones. Kelvin showed no such
consideration, crushing them underfoot obliviously.

Perhaps
I was being unkind to him. It was still very early in the morning;
I’d been awoken at 4am by my wife poking me in the ribs as the
phone downstairs rang shrilly. A body had been found on the beach and
my presence was required immediately. There’d been no time to make
proper coffee; I’d settled for stale instant grains from a dusty
jar. Even with that chemical fortification, I couldn't be cheerful
this early. It was the height of summer, but even the sun hadn't fully risen yet and its pale radiance cast reaching shadows across
the tall terraces of shingle.

The
body had been found by the sculpture by a local resident out for an
early morning constitutional. It still sat, propped up against the
flat, rear scallop shell, serenely staring out at the sun rising over
the ocean.

“What
do you think?” Kelvin asked, nodding down at it.

I didn't reply. The body was of a middle-aged woman, dark-haired but
greying slightly, dressed casually under a thin beige jacket. There
was no sign of a struggle and no obvious indicator of death. I would've ascribed it to a natural cause, if not for the shabby
briefcase that yawned open beside her legs.

It
was full of money but, more precisely, half-full of money: £50 notes
bundled together by thick rubber bands. Scrupulously half-full, like
some pedant had meticulously measured the case’s interior, before
removing exactly half.
I wondered what it meant. A death from natural causes would've left
a full briefcase here; a robbery would've left no briefcase at all.

I
was about to say as much to Kelvin, but the sounds of an argument
interrupted me. Along the beach, near a cluster of weather-beaten
fishing sheds, a few of the attending constables were engaged in
fierce debate with a photographer and woman with a notebook.

The
local press. It hadn't taken long for word to spread. I’d known
they’d eventually arrive, but I’d been hoping for more time. As
the sun rose higher, the constables would start fending off tourists,
swimmers and interested locals. I wondered if we had enough uniforms
with us to control the growing crowd.

I didn't dignify that with an answer and turned back to the body as
Kelvin crunched over to the peeling black paint and weather-warped
wood of the fishing huts. I’d have to do the real work myself,
obviously.

I
pulled on some latex gloves from my coat pocket and crouched down by
the body. From beneath her beige jacket’s zip, a smudge of dark
discolouration on her t-shirt peeked out and, sure enough, when I
twitched the material aside, a small bullet wound glared angrily out
above a long bloody stain that stretched down her whole left side.

Murder,
then, but there was no bullet hole through the jacket. Someone had
walked right up to her, slipped the gun under her jacket and shot
her, face-to-face, at point-blank range. Someone she knew and
trusted.

The
hairs on the back of my neck rose. In all the years I’d worked
here, there’d never been a murder. It had always been a peaceful,
beautiful seaside town; nothing ever cast a shadow over it. It was
exactly the kind of shocking case that could develop a solid
reputation for me.

I
turned my attention to the briefcase and the cash which half-filled
it. The case itself was unremarkable: some generic brand with
imitation leather and cheap brass clasps. There were dozens like it.
I’d had one as an unimaginative Christmas present years before. I
gently picked up a bundle of money. The rubber band was worn; clearly
it had been used many times before, but the bank notes were clean and
unwrinkled. When I examined them more closely, a strong solvent smell
assaulted my nostrils.

Could
they be counterfeit?

I
smiled secretly at the irony. This poor woman hadn't got what she
was expecting, but clearly neither had her killer…

Celeste: Take Daddy's glasses awayMe: Why?Celeste: Daddy naughty.Me: Why? Celeste: Daddy move Dolly.Me: Why?Celeste: Don't know.Lesson learned: Celeste isn't the only one who can keep asking why (this one's a victory! Or it will be once I get my glasses back!)

Celeste went to the zoo today with my Mum and Dad and saw lions and parrots and other animals that I can't understand when she says. She's had a picnic, a huge ice-cream and got to see the tortoises being fed. After that, she had a nap in the sunshine.I spent today in a computer lab with the blinds drawn (because otherwise the screens are invisible in direct sunlight), listening to my students stress about their imminent exams. I am so very, very envious.Lesson learned: Don't ever grow up.On the writing front, I'm aiming to get something submitted for a competition on the 16th May, except that the word limit is 1700. My entry isn't finished yet and it's creeping north of 2000. I suspect that a heavy session with the editor's pen is in order.Or I could play Battlefleet Gothic on my PC for a while.Choices, choices.

Monday, 2 May 2016

When I'm not dealing with Hurricane Celeste, I write fiction. It's been a hobby of mine for years, on and off. With Celeste down for the night (cross-fingers), I started thinking of the first story I ever got accepted by a magazine: "Bottom of the Barrel". It started just as a stab at humorous flash fiction, mainly to prove to my wife that I could write something that wasn't bleak. The real joke was that it got accepted straight away (by Lakeside Magazine) and all of the other stuff struggled through multiple rewrites.

It seemed to do quite well; they even described it as one of the most popular of that anthology. Despite my pretentious to being the next Steven King, my funny stuff always seems to go down better.Anyway, for memory's sake, I've added it below (you can tell by reading it the sort of films I watched when I was little!)

***

“Bottom of the
Barrel”

Frankly, I don’t rate my
chances very highly. Of all the people to try, I am probably the
least worthy and the least likely to succeed. I suspect that I have
less than thirty minutes until it all starts. My efforts, and most
probably my life, will be over seconds after that.

It all started when Gigalith the
Destroyer descended from the sky in a roar of violet flame into the
heart of New York. I'm not going to pretend that I was there when
it happened, like so many of my colleagues used to do. When that
colossal machine arrived, I was presenting a rather derivative paper
at an obscure conference, attended by three colleagues from my own
laboratory and another scientist who showed no interest and just
coughed loudly throughout my presentation. The first I knew of
Gigalith’s visitation was on my hotel room's television when I saw
the hundred foot tall robot standing in Central Park, gleaming
imperiously in the early sunrise.

I even managed to miss it when
the Destroyer rampaged through the city, destroying every structure
with flashes of deadly energy that pulsed from its expressionless
black eyes.

Of course, the military fought
back – furiously and skilfully, it must be said. Gigalith shrugged
off every shell, rocket and bullet without pause and used the flame
jets to leap through the atmosphere to Chicago. Again it stood silent
and motionlessly for a whole day, weathering the pounding explosions
of increasingly desperate military forces, before rampaging unchecked
through the evacuated buildings of the Windy City.

The nuclear warhead that they
dropped on Chicago didn't even scuff the shiny metal shell. It was insulting how little attention the robot paid to the glowing mushroom
cloud as it strode casually through its incandescent heart.

#

Step forwards Doctor Richard
Stanhauser – one of the greatest scientific minds of our
generation. Volunteering immediately after Chicago’s incineration,
he and his team were put to work in a military lab and rapidly
produced a powerful multi-spectrum laser capable of reducing a Main
Battle Tank to glowing slag in seconds. The Destroyer had reached
Toyko by that point and Doctor Stanhauser raced ahead of it to set up
his laser in its path. I'm told that the battle itself was both
terrible and wonderful. When the gigantic laser powered up, Toyko’s
neon lights dimmed in a disturbing ripples of darkness and, when the
weapon fired, the air along the laser’s path ionised into a
bewildering spectrum of colours. It’s just a pity that it didn't work and Gigalith the Destroyer stamped Stanhauser, his support team
and the multi-spectrum laser into the asphalt.

I think that’s when the
military really started to panic. They called a huge conference
whilst Gigalith was busy destroying Mexico City and ordered “all
scientists” to attend it. Geology is a fine field of study, but
generating useful ideas on combating monsters from outer space is
probably outside of their normal remit. It was during either this
conference or the next that Professor Karen Douglas, the eminent
chemist, was chosen to find a way to defeat the robot.

Her plan to use a top secret
gaseous compound that rapidly corroded metal was ingenious. The
“Formula X” gas reduced Mexico City’s abandoned cars to
scattered atoms in seconds, but did nothing at all to the towering
machine. Rumour said that there wasn't enough of her ashes left to
fill a matchbox.

#

Since then, increasingly
panicked global conferences have selected particle physicists (proton
beams don’t work), volcanologists (neither do erupting volcanoes)
and mathematicians (the Destroyer is uninterested in devious
paradoxes or logic puzzles) and none of them have had any success
whatsoever. It’s been two years now. I’d say that we were
scraping the bottom of the barrel, but we went past that point some
time ago. We’re now at the point where even an unattractive,
unsuccessful scientist like me can seem appealing.

Obviously, someone has been
reading a little too much War
of the Worlds, because
it’s been decided that a microbiologist would be just the ticket to
defeat an extra-terrestrial enemy. It’s a pity that no-one bothered
to ask me what sort of microbe I worked with before they abandoned me
in the path of the Destroyer.

I really hope that Gigalith has
an allergy to brewer’s yeast, otherwise I'm in a lot of trouble.

I'm not really new to parenting. I've got a daughter of two and another on the way, so compared to where I was two years ago, I'm much more experienced. I've learned everything I need to know.Complacency is dangerous with toddlers.

The "Whys" have started this week. This is especially bad because I'm a science teacher which practically means I've got a Hypocratic Oath to answer "Why" questions. Even if they're presented every thirty seconds day after day after day. With a toddler, it can get deep too quickly.Me: "Celeste, eat your dinner sweetheart"

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I also sell teaching resources (Secondary Science) to pay for all the coloured pens and reams of paper I need to avoid writing a novel. My TES shop can be found here.

Before I started seriously avoiding writing novels, a few did slip the net and escape into the real world. My steampunk/gothic effort called "Infernal Engines" can be found on Amazon here and the other one, "Damage" is a sci-fi/psychological story and can be found on Amazon here.